Manual or Guideline

IFC’s Definitions and Metrics for Climate-Related Activities

April 27, 2017

This document outlines the definitions and typology that IFC uses for identifying, promoting, and tracking climate-related investment and advisory projects.

IFC periodically updates its Climate Definitions to take into account changes in the marketplace, changes in IFC’s strategy, and updates to the commonly agreed principles1 for tracking mitigation finance agreed to by the multilateral development banks.2
As part of the 2016 WBG Climate Change Action Plan, IFC’s Climate Implementation Plan includes four objectives.

  1. Scale climate investments to reach 28 percent of IFC’s annual financing by 2020
  2. Catalyze $13 billion in private sector capital annually by 2020 to climate sectors through mobilization, aggregation, and de-risking products
  3. Maximize impact through greenhouse gas emissions reduction and resilience
  4. Account for climate risk—the physical risk of climate impacts and the carbon asset risk in IFC’s investment selection